UI Animation: Don't let screen overloading succumb your customers!

Most of the companies have taken the online route to reach out a large number of customers and to increase the scope of their business. For this purpose, a website is the obvious place to start with. There are web designers who offer professional services to create the UI design of company websites. The latest trend in web designing is the use of animation to enhance the visual appeal of a website.

Benefits of using UI Animation

Animations and other interactive elements on a website have the following objectives:

Drawing the attention of the users to particularly important sections.

Add an element of fun to the user experience with the help of colorful and attractive popping designs.

Give the impression to the user that the website is updated with the latest technology.

Companies go for animations in order to attract more customers to their website. However, it is important to remember that overloading the UI design with too many motion elements can do more harm than good. Designers tend to go a little overboard with animations to show off their skills.

When you ask a designer to create your website interface, you should make it a point to check out all the aspects yourself to see whether they are user-friendly or not. Delightful animations do not always imply that customers will be pleased by them. Here are some of the reasons why too much of animation can hurt your business and drive away customers.

Slow website loading- Too many animations affect the speed of website loading. The longer it takes for the website to load, the more frustrated the users become. They immediately close your web page and look for other faster websites. This means a direct loss of potential customers.

Page transition becomes tedious- UI animation can have a detrimental effect on the transition from one web page to another. When the user selects a page on the website, the motions of zooming in and out or the constant appearance of a rotating circle on the screen, can really annoy the user. There is no way out once the animation begins which is why the users think twice before coming to the website again.

Increase in cognitive loading- Cognitive load refers to the amount of mental effort that is required for completing a task. A heavy cognitive load can cause the users to get distracted. Animations are basically pictures or graphics in motion. These visuals always attract the attention of a person first, but too many visuals can cause confusion and lead to cognitive overload.

Inaccessible content- Repeated animations can act as roadblocks to the actual content of the website which the user is really looking for. This increases the effort that the user has to put in locating the content that he or she wants. If the users do not find what they are looking for in the first few minutes, they once again leave the website. Bad user-experience can really affect your business.

Now that you know what a massive disadvantage your business suffers from if you go overboard with the UI design, you should be careful while creating it. Here are a few pointers that you can follow to avoid a debacle.

Focus on the goal- You need to ask yourself the question 'what is the animation communicating to the user?' It is very important to stay on track. When you think from the user's perspective, you can make a better decision regarding the design.

Think about the user's focus- While designing the interface, you should determine the target sections where the user's attention is most likely to get focused on and avoid placing animation effects there.

Speed of the animation- You should select a speed that is not too fast nor too slow. If your animation is conveying some useful information, you should let it be on the screen long enough for the information to register on the user's mind.

Frequency- It is annoying for the user to encounter the same animations again and again. You should go for such a UI design which does not get in the way more than once otherwise it can reduce the user's efficiency in finding the content he or she is looking for.

Accessibility- This point is related to the last one in the sense that the important content on the website should not get hidden under unnecessary animation. All the significant content should be accessible to the user without interference from animations.

If these points are kept in mind, you can avoid the pitfalls of screen overload and make your website user-friendly and navigable. The next time you approach a web designer for your UI design or UI animation, do not fall into the trap of complex designs. Use animation to attract more customers instead of driving them away.